Bullying is all around us

Forty years ago I wrote a novel called I'm the King of the Castle. Although intended for adults, it quickly became read in schools and is a GCSE set book. It also became unpopular because it deals with the merciless bullying of one 11-year-old boy by another until the victim sees no escape but to commit suicide.

The objectors were always the parents of boys who complained that although they knew bullying happened, it certainly never led to a child's suicide. I knew that it sometimes did and in the years since the book's publication there have been all too many instances of it, of both boys and girls killing themselves because of systematic bullying. The readers who have never complained are the young people. They say the book is all too true to life.

Substitute "unkindness", or "cruelty" for "bullying" to get closer to the heart of what it means. Those words bring you up short, whereas "bullying" subliminally reminds me at least of "bully-off" in hockey - implying a bit of rough and tumble between lads - nothing too serious, no lasting damage. If someone calls you names, the classic reply is "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me".

Oh but they can, they do. Words can inflict far more insidious, cruel and lasting damage than a few thumps - not that I am in favour of thumps but unless we are talking of GBH, the pain is soon over. That of malicious, cruel sneering and belittling leaves psychological scars which never heal.

A gang of girls hated "Sally", my friend's grand-daughter, for being "posh" and "clever". She lived in a modest semi-detached house, she was bright and wanted to be a vet. They had no ambition, thought school pointless, teachers scum. Sally was their perfect target, a quiet girl who also had a slight speech defect. They called her vile names, they shoved her into corners and stole her watch, defaced her books, locked her in the lavatory, followed her home jeering, grabbed her down an alley and took her purse; they framed her for crimes they had done themselves, they put excrement in her school bag, destroyed her homework, pursued her round the school whispering and chanting. And then they moved on to cyber-bullying, via social networking sites - a fun new means of inflicting cruelty.

Sally eventually told her mother, a single parent, about it, and her mother went to the school. That was a fatal error. Two days later, Sally was attacked by a gang on a dark November afternoon and beaten so badly she spent several nights in hospital. She left the school, has been unable to continue studying and is currently in psychiatric care. It is a miracle that she did not use the ultimate "escape route".

It is an appalling but by no means unusual story. And yet such bullying is not confined to young people; it is all around us and many would be surprised to realise that the behaviour they are so thoughtlessly indulging in or from which they are suffering, is bullying. The internet is a playground for bullies. People on forums and in chat rooms abuse, sneer, deride, name-call and they do it casually over minor matters. Some name-calling is done with the best intentions. (Don't call someone overweight, abuse them as "obese.") Don't disagree, don't have a rational argument, don't differ - attack.

My parents and the generations before them taught that you did not argue over religion or politics. I believe full and frank debate is healthy and one can agree to differ over most matters, that friends can remain so while being poles apart on many serious issues and that respect for the convictions of others is paramount. An agnostic scientist I know calls himself "an unbeliever, but a pious and respectful one". On Facebook today I was accused of "dumb worship of a 'sky pixie'". Christian and other believers are now regularly bullied like this, abused and derided. Political correctness can be a form of bullying. Minorities, having been bullied, treated cruelly and outcast, now turn round and do the bullying themselves, in order to be top dog after years of being at the bottom of the heap. In their quest for the equal treatment, respect and kindness which they have never experienced, they turn the tables. Most bullies and abusers behave in that way and always it is because they were themselves once bullied. That may be cod psychology, but cod psychology has a way of hitting the nail on the head.

Young people copy the behaviour of adults, for all they claim to do precisely the opposite. If adults name-call instead of disagreeing rationally, scream abuse at, say, a motorist who cuts them up; punch someone to the ground or worse because they have jumped the queue; are careless with the way we address the old or those who are different from us or whose ambitions are greater than ours; swear at doctors and nurses who are trying to treat them and the police who want to keep them safe, then young people will do the same. The girls who tortured 13-year-old Sally did so out of envy - they envied her pleasant home and loving mother, they envied her ability and wished deep down that they had her ambition because they knew it would be likely to lead her to a good job, a happy life. But no one had any ambition for them, encouraged them or listened to their worries. It did not help that Sally was a practising Jew. Her abusers had been given no ethical let alone religious code.

I once received a letter from a young man who wrote that my book had brought back the cruelty he had suffered at prep school. He realised he must now seek help because the only alternative was to kill himself: "So perhaps one fictional boy committing suicide may lead to one real man not doing so."